When most folks heard about the Salesforce.com acquisition of Quip last year I bet they saw it as a Salesforce attempt to compete with Google Docs or Office 365. What I saw was the next Salesforce.com UI or or as I like to call it 'Digital Paper' for the today's Sales Professional.

The reality is that professionals today have long ago embraced the agile economy. They live in a world of interaction moments. They work where they find themselves. Their world is unstructured. You see there are two types of Salesforce.com (http://salesforce.com/) users out there. The first are what I like to call 'The Captives.' These are the folks who live inside the Salesforce UI. They get to work and log in. Their world is contained within the so-called Lightning world. Its new and exciting but one very much driven by access to the browser.

The second kind of user is my customer. They live between worlds. Their world is filled with time in and out of the office. They spend as much time in between customer appointments as they do in front of the client. Their world is a mobile one. Its fast and furious. I call them 'The Hunter Gatherers.' As a result, when these folks use technology they fall back on the usual suspects. Think Outlook, Word, and Evernote. You get the picture. Unfortunately for them Salesforce and other systems are what comes next. To do what they do they need solutions that work on and offline. The need to accept unstructured data input and fast just like the world in which they live.

So what is a Quip. Basically Quip is a application developed by Bret Taylor. Who is Bret Taylor? Per his Twitter profile he is the Ex-CTO of Facebook, co-founder of FriendFeed and co-creator of Google Maps. It's a digital platform that makes it easy for teams to create and collaborate. But don't take my word for it check it out at their website. Oh and Salesforce bought them last year. Yes Bret Taylor is now at Salesforce.

So where does Quip fall into all of this?

​I believe Quip is the new 'Hunter-gatherer UI' for Salesforce. Quip provides the opportunity to bridge the gap that exists between the unstructured world of modern day professionals, and the structured world that management likes to believe exists. That world of carefully scheduled appointments and sales methodologies all captured in so-called systems of record versus the back of a napkin world throw away world of reality.

Imagine a world where a Sales Professional could open an app on his notebook, tablet or phone and start taking notes. As they take these notes, a simple click of the @ button brings up a menu of actions like adding a task or sending an email. But let's not stop there. Imagine an AI layer that parsed the notes in real-time looking for contextual indications of next actions that the note-taker might want to execute and then helping him execute all in realtime. In Salesforce terminology imagine Einstein (Einstein is what Salesforce calls it's baked in Artificial Intelligence Layer) embedded in the note taking application. So for example, if the note taker were to write 'customer interested in adding capabilities to his network in the next 12 months'. Immediately the AI component established a soft opportunity in Salesforce. If the note taker wrote 'setup a meeting with procurement next week' AI sent an email to the procurement team requesting a meeting and displaying times that aligned with the note takers schedule. Imagine a world where just taking notes triggered real actions all tracked and denoted in Salesforce, ready and waiting when the note taker left the meeting.

Remember all of this is taking place within an unstructured interface that is nothing more than a traditional note taking app. But this is no traditional note taking app this rather this is 'Digital Paper.' For me, as I stare into tomorrow 'Digital Paper' is the new UI. It is the perfect marriage of the human and artificial intelligence. It is the answer to the dreaded question of our age which is how do you get them to use it. The answer is you don't. Rather you break the paradigm. You turn notes into data and that data into actions.

So am I dreaming? No, I don't think so. I have been using Quip for a few weeks now, and more and more I believe Quip is Salesforce's answer to 'Digital Paper.' Already you can add tasks, set reminders and link to other documents all from within the unstructured confines of Quip documents. This week Quip announced the ability to embed live Salesforce data within a Quip document and link Quip documents to Salesforce objects. Unless I am crazy, they just need to layer Einstein on top of Quip, and my dream will be so close to becoming reality

So am I dreaming? Time will tell, but I say it would be pretty cool if it came to pass. How about it Salesforce?

Well, a few weeks back the world woke up the news that Microsoft had paid an astounding USD 26 Billion for LinkedIn. I have used the time to digest my thoughts and so here they are.

LinkedIn has always been a useful tool. I don't think there is any doubt that it is the world's largest 'self-curated' repository of professional data. It has also grown into a must-have tool for recruiters. However, my relationship with LinkedIn has always left me feeling used. Kind of like that feeling that some poor souls feel when they find themselves in a one-sided relationship where one of the parties, them, is hopelessly in love while there the other is only there because of the existence of a fat wallet. You see that was always my issue. At the end of the day, LinkedIn was only LinkedIn because you shared and curated your professional resume on their site. You the professional provided LinkedIn with an enormous amount of value, but when you took a step back and asked what LinkedIn offered you in return all you were left with was a subscription payment landing page. Now I know there will be those that will say that I am overlooking the value of having your data listed in the world's largest 'self-curated' repository of professional data. I don't disagree.

Of course, all the social networks are to some degree guilty of this, but it's not like Facebook or Instagram have their hand out to users asking for you to pay for features. Rather they add features to entice you to use the site even more. With LinkedIn, if you wanted access to more features you needed to upgrade your subscription. Kind of like Facebook asking you to pay to see who had liked your photos. Anyone that has upgraded their LinkedIn subscription knows that these features translated into greater access to data about your data. The bottom line for me was that all LinkedIn's value was directly related to our information. This is why when I found out about the sale to Microsoft one of my immediate reactions was anger. Where was my cut of those billions? After all, they just sold my data or to put it in context they just sold my photos. Then again should I have been surprised? As the old saying goes a Zebra does not change its stripes? The relationship had always been one-sided. So why would this change now? Oh, I am sure the lawyers ensured that somewhere hidden in those illegible Terms of Service all this is perfectly legal. But you know I still feel used.

The next issue that I have with this transaction was that despite everything I have already said the one thing that made the relationship tolerable was that LinkedIn was independent. It was like Switzerland. Kind of like the rest of the world's relationship with the Swiss you did not fully trust them, but so long as you operated from the perspective that they would always do what was in their best interests you could manage around that. Now with this transaction that the whole assumption no longer stands. LinkedIn has, in my opinion, lost its independence. My expectation is that it will now become more and more Microsoft-centric. Traditionally LinkedIn thru the heavy-handed control of its API has never been friendly to other application platforms. Yes, there was an app for Salesforce, but the added functionality was only marginally better than one would get from using the app natively. In fact, in the last few Salesforce releases, there had been a slow decline in the level of integration mostly in line with LinkedIn's development of its Sales Navigator product. Now with the Microsoft transaction, we shall see further degradation of integrations with competitors because let's face it everyone outside of the Microsoft ecosystem is now a competitor. And I don't know about you, but I have lived in that world. That world where everything was Microsoft. It was not good for innovation; it was not useful for integration; it was dangerous for security and as a result, it was bad for users.

Ok, enough of this doom and gloom. I do believe there is a silver lining. I hope that this transaction will drive innovation. No longer can the players sit back and do nothing when it comes to developing viable competitors to LinkedIn. Let's hope finally Salesforce and others will step up. In fact Salesforce themselves once acquired a company that had they allowed it to develop differently could have I believe grown into a real LinkedIn competitor. That company was Jigsaw a company Salesforce acquired back in 2010. Originally Jigsaw was founded by Jim Fowler, now the CEO of Owler (formerly InfoArmy). The premise behind Jigsaw was to provide a way for Sales Professionals to share and swap data on prospects that were accurate and up to date. Now ultimately we know that Jim Fowler left Salesforce and Jigsaw morphed into Data.com, which is largely today powered by Dun & Bradstreet with the social aspects of the service largely forgotten although we still have Data.com Connect. I believe that the time has come for Salesforce.com to take the bull by the horns and radically overhaul the Data.com brand. They need to learn from LinkedIn's errors and instead of charging users to share their information on Data.com they need to make the service free to use and integrate that functionality right into the Salesforce.com platform. When you look at the introduction of Salesforce Lightning Sync, the recent acquisition of Implisit.com, the opportunity to turn the value proposition on its head and transform Data.com from what it is today into a genuine contact sharing network built right into the Salesforce platform is staring them in the face. After all, we already have the so-called People Profile page in Salesforce although I am not sure if most users even know it exists or what purpose it serves. Take this page as a starting point and transform it not only into the ultimate profile page but one that that can be shared publically while providing a platform to these users for sharing and exchanging contacts with other users across Salesforce Orgs. Whoa, I can see the deep intake of breath across the corporate compliance officer universe. But let's face it this is what LinkedIn was in effect. The difference was that compliance officers had no control over what users published on their LinkedIn profile page. Let's let Data.com return to its Jigsaw roots and flower into the Professional Social Network that it could have become. Let's allow it to become a real competitor to LinkedIn.

In conclusion, I only ask one thing. Let's not forget that it is our users that are agreeing to share their hard-won data with the network and at the end of the day it is that data that is bringing the value. So let's treat user's right and unlike our friends at LinkedIn lets not treat them as a commodity to be horse traded to the highest bidder.

At PSAdvisory, we specialize in helping insurance focused organizations implement SalesForce.com. Want to find out more please drop us a note via our contact us page by clicking here.

]]>Sat, 09 Apr 2016 18:10:44 GMThttp://www.psadvisory.com/blog/chatbots-insurance-and-the-death-of-the-customer-portalThe last few weeks there have a been a bunch of articles about something called Chatbots, and it got me thinking how this would affect the insurance industry.

But first things first. What exactly is a chatbot? Wikipedia defines a chatbot as follows “a chatter robot is a type of conversational agent, a computer program designed to simulate an intelligent conversation with one or more human users via auditory or textual methods.”

Another definition I liked was one where a chatbot was defined as a replacement for every app you have ever downloaded. Today different apps answer different questions. An example would be a weather app. Yes, that app gives you a lot of detailed information about the weather, but the vast majority of users just want to know very basic information. Like is it going to rain? How hot will it be? And, this is where a chatbot excels. In the most basic terms, a chatbot is an application which you can ask questions using the conversational method.

So where does a chatbot live? Well, it lives inside what most would call a messenger app. Think AOL IM (AIM) from long ago or Facebook Messenger in the consumer space or Slack in the business world. Today we simply use these apps to communicate with friends or work colleagues. However imagine if instead of just being able to contact your human friends you could talk with a chatbot that could quickly answer questions in a conversational way. Perhaps even participating in the conversations with your human friends.

At its most basic the chatbot will directly answer generic questions. However, very quickly we see the lowly chatbot being able to access data specific to you and thus gaining what some like to call a memory or what I like to refer to as personalized contextual intelligence. Bottom line the more a system whether it be a chatbot or another kind of system knows about you the more useful it becomes. A perfect example of this would be the classic question will it rain. Well if the chatbot has access to your location information then it can answer a lot more intelligently than if it did not have access to your location.

Bottom line a lot of folks believe that given how quickly messenger products are replacing legacy communications methods like email and text that very soon chatbots embedded in these messenger apps will replace dedicated apps for search and customer service. This is exactly why Facebook and Google are so interested in chatbots. Given the massive revenue that comes from traditional technologies like search, the idea that something embedded inside a messenger app could replace all of that is a huge threat and justifies massive investment. The rumour is that Facebook will announce a chatbot store at its upcoming F8 conference and has been beta testing a bot inside its messenger client for a while now. The Dutch airline KLM has announced a customer service bot.

Now these are early days, and this was demonstrated by the disastrous events surrounding the Microsoft developed Tay bot where the internet quickly turned Tay into a racist. So as with any new publically facing technology, there are hurdles to overcome. That said the possibilities are infinite. Today's corporations have access to massive internal and external databases that hold information unique to all of us. When we call an 800 number today one of the first things a human agent will do is attempt to pull up our history in whatever form that takes to get the context surrounding our question. The objective is not only to make the call more efficient but to provide a more customized experience.

It is not a leap to imagine a world where chatbots with data hooks into our customer history and access via API connections to external data sources will soon be the first line of defence when consumers have a question. Because of the conversational nature of the interface chatbots align very well with the way that humans like to interact. Also the fact that these chatbots live inside the very interfaces where many consumers are now spending more and more time make the transition from traditional human agent to intelligent chatbot powered customer service even more inevitable.

So how do I see impacting the insurance industry? Well, the vast majority of inbound calls whether they are related to personal lines or small commercial level are to either make very basic changes to a policy or to ask a question which for the most part would be easy to answer so long as the agent or system has access to contextual data surrounding the caller. Examples of this would be policy endorsements like adding or removing a vehicle, requesting a basic certificate of insurance or asking a question related to current coverage. Questions like these could very quickly be answered by appropriately empowered chatbots that live right inside a messenger client such as the one powered by Facebook and others.

Now this is important not only because is a fundamental change to how insurance companies and brokers interact with their customers and prospects but it is also a significant shift away from where the interaction takes place. Today I see a lot of discussion in the industry around the need for customer portals associated with broker and carrier websites. My prediction is that these portals will become barren wastelands. Why? Because the way we interact with consumers is about to change in such a fundamental way that these static portals will act as an obstacle rather than a facilitator of interaction. As usual, consumers are proving, they will choose how and where they want to interact. With the advent of social media consumers have demonstrated that they have a voice and are willing to use it. Businesses have learnt that trying to silence customers only results in catastrophic blowback.​Now consumers are indicating that they wish to change the location of where they want to interact with businesses whether it be in the prospect stage or as customers. The idea that clients and prospects will somehow come to a company website or learn how to navigate some poorly designed generic portal is foolhardy. We live in the age of a socially empowered consumer, and they will continue to decide where and when they will engage. The age of the chatbot is upon us.]]>Sun, 28 Feb 2016 14:58:35 GMThttp://www.psadvisory.com/blog/google-compare-the-insurance-marketplace-is-deadlong-live-the-insurance-marketplaceSo this week brought us the news that Google Compare was shutting down. I can just hear the collective sigh of relief. So we dodged a bullet.

Want to know my opinion? It does not matter. I don't think Google was bringing more to the table than access to an online comparative rater. Tools like this have been available to agents for years. All Google did was replace the swivel chair interface (aka you the agent) with software. I was waiting to see what additional value Google would add to the customer experience and at the end of the day they did not add anything. In reality, I believe the experience for the few clients who ultimately used the service was poor.For technology to add value to the experience, there was must be a value proposition larger than ubiquitous online access. The technology must add insights and guidance to the decision-making process. You often hear words like Big Data and Machine Learning coined when experts describe how technology can enhance the user experience, and this could not be truer in this context. In fact, the Google Compare offering suffered the same limitations that our existing batch of the internal technology shackles us with. They store policy information, calculate template based commissions and provide GAAP accounting but do not offer any intelligent insights.

The simple take away from the end of Google Compare is, in my opinion, the following. Google Compare operated in a real open access marketplace. The consumer realised that the Google offering was adding little value to the process that they could already get from traditional channels. So they did what consumers do every day. They voted with their feet or in this case their fingers. So why has the same not happened to the internal software applications brokers use every day that in many ways suffer from the same deficiencies? How is it that the consumer was able to exact change in the marketplace while the brokerage industry has suffered the same failings and shortcomings at the hands of incumbent vendors, yet done nothing to force change. The answer is simple. As consumers of industry technology we are operating in a very inefficient market if you could even call it that. The offerings are limited and the customers, aka the brokerage firms, don't collaborate. As a result, there are limited market forces at work and bad offerings are allowed to continue to perpetuate to the detriment of the industry.​The real lesson for us all when it comes to the failure of Google Compare is that we should somehow act more like consumers. After all Google and others will not slink away into the shadows never to return. Rather they will do what they always do. They will analyse the data and ultimately use that data to refine their approach. Let's hope that we as an industry take this opportunity to learn from the end of Google Compare and not continue to repeat our current destructive behaviour which is just to accept the status quo.]]>Tue, 16 Feb 2016 21:32:47 GMThttp://www.psadvisory.com/blog/the-greatest-threat-the-insurance-brokerage-industry-comes-from-withinIn today's issue of the Wall Street Journals 'CIO Journal,' there was an article titled the 'The rise of the Platform Economy'.

The article defines a platform as follows and I quote.

“A platform or complement strategy differs from a product strategy in that it requires an external ecosystem to generate complementary product or service innovations and build positive feedback between the complements and the platform. The effect is much greater potential for innovation and growth than a single product-oriented firm can generate alone.” (Definition by MIT Professor Michael Cusumano).

So what does this have to do with independent insurance brokers? Well, there is general agreement that the insurance industry is ripe for disruption. Customers are adopting this new interconnected consumerized world faster than most agents can keep up. Whether it is mobile or the Internet of Things (IoT) or plays by competitors in the B2B space like Zenefits or the havoc being wrought by the Affordable Care Act one does not have to look for far for disruptive forces challenging the status quo.

Now change in business is part of life, and the winners are usually the ones that can modify their business plan to embrace the change and outperform their competition. Of course there are those that will only stick their heads in the sand with the strategy being to weather that change hoping that if they simply wait it out, the disruptive influences will just move on. See Blockbuster for more details on the outcome.

To be successful, we need to have options. Innovation and agility should be built into the way we operate. The challenge is who has time? Just taking care of our customers, finding new ones and keeping the lights on pretty much takes care of the non-sleeping hours. On top of that where will the investment dollars come from needed to design and build these innovations even if they even could be constructed in isolation?

Well, the good news is that other industries have already solved this problem. They are building their businesses on platforms that are designed to create ecosystems of products and networks that bring the innovation to the industry. For examples of this one only has to look at the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store or on the B2B side of the house what Salesforce.com has done around its AppExchange. The WSJ article spells out a bunch more if you are looking for specifics. These organizations realized a while back that they could not be all things to all customers. However by creating a platform which partners could innovate on top of the result is and I quote "much greater potential for innovation and growth than a single product-orientated firm can generate alone." (MIT Professor Michael Cusumano)

The threat we face as an industry is that we need to look reality in the face and ask whether the systems we are dependent on today will allow the development of these ecosystems of innovation. If they don't, then we have a significant problem which undermines our business model and threatens our very survival.

If the incumbent systems are restricting brokers ability to innovate this will prove catastrophic. The facts speak for themselves. The majority of agents don't do more than 10 million in revenue and have no realistic way to finance innovation of this scale on their own. Put bluntly the industry need access to this innovation ecosystem to survive. For the larger players, the only way to escape lock-in is to forklift themselves off the incumbent systems which will undoubtedly bring massive change management risks along with huge increases in internal costs.

So what is the solution? We as an industry need to demand more from our vendors. We need them to understand that by opening up their systems they are in fact not only saving themselves but empowering their customers to prepare for the big challenges facing the industry. We need them to create development environments that will make developing solutions for the industry attractive for developers from both a technical and financial perspective. This means creating API's that align with industry standards. This means outreach efforts to the developer community. Time will tell if this message falls on deaf ears but one thing is clear. I don't see how the insurance brokerage industry can innovate fast enough to outperform the disruptive challenges facing it without access to innovation ecosystems that underpin today's so-called platform economies and the solution is not to simply stick our heads in the sand hope the disruption will pass us by. ]]>Sat, 13 Feb 2016 21:43:53 GMThttp://www.psadvisory.com/blog/why-it-does-not-matter-what-happens-to-zenefitsI have to assume that many traditional health insurance brokers have enjoyed reading about the trials and tribulations inflicted upon Zenefits this past week. Well here is my 5 cents worth.

It does not matter what happens to Zenefits, the company.

Whether Zenefits survives is immaterial. What is important is that Zenefits has changed the value proposition for the health insurance brokerage industry once and for all. As a result, of Zenefits offering commercial customers free HR software customers expectations of what they should expect from their health insurance broker has fundamentally altered.Just as UBER has changed the landscape of the taxi industry forever, the advent of Zenefits has changed the health insurance broker value proposition.

There may be some that are breathing a sigh of relief watching the powers that be come down on Zenefits. My advice is don't rest on your laurels. This is only the beginning of the change. If it is not Zenefits, it will be somebody else, but this is not the time for complacency. Now is the time to contemplate a future where spreadsheets and MS Access long the tools of choice for brokers from Miami to Seattle are no longer going to hold up. Now is the time to review the software provided by the incumbent Agency Management System vendors and ask is this going to sustain my firm in the long hard battles ahead.One only has to look to the email sent out by the new Zenefits CEO, David Sacks, for the reasons why traditional brokers need to re-evaluate their tool set.

"This is a great market for us because (1) it's huge (with many million small businesses in the US); (2) it's "greenfield" (meaning that it's under-served by technology — in fact, an Excel spreadsheet is often the main competitor); and (3) the free aspect of our product is extremely compelling."

The good news is the massive advances in cloud computing have created a technology landscape where traditional brokers now have access to tools that even large multinationals would have struggled to develop only five or so years ago.

The problem is that with choice comes responsibility. Brokerage managers now face a challenge regarding ensuring they bet on the right horse going forward. Just as one can make the right choice with the flick of an AMEX card, one can also do the wrong thing and in a world of Zenefits and UBER, the repercussions can be devastating.​So how does one prevent oneself becoming the next Blockbuster? Who has time to rifle through the new product announcements that seem to litter the tech blogs on an hourly basis. Well, one makes sure one selects the right advisors and by advisors, I don't mean your Agency Management System vendor. What the industry needs now more than ever is good, honest advice because if I am certain of only one thing, it is that there are going to be winners and losers over the next eighteen to thirty-six months. The only unknown is who will make up which list.]]>Thu, 28 Jan 2016 14:18:35 GMThttp://www.psadvisory.com/blog/why-salesforcecom-can-be-a-differentiator-for-your-insurance-agencyAs Facebook CIO Tim Campos told the CIO Journal last year: "We found that tweaking off-the-shelf software would force us to adapt our process to the tools. We want to do the opposite: make our process better, more efficient, faster. Our tools are very purpose-built." - Source Wall Street Journal

Customers often ask why Salesforce.com? The quote from the Facebook CIO goes a long way to answering that question. Ultimately the biggest danger of implementing noncustomizable off the shelf software is that you commoditize your offering to the marketplace. Even worse you align your value proposition with your direct competition offering no differentiation. The result when an agency falls into this trap is that the only differentiation left available is price, and we all know there will always be someone with a lower price.

Now not every organization comes close to having the resources of Facebook. But by avoiding the herd mentality of the vast majority a forward thinking agency can execute like Facebook. Most people think of Salesforce.com as a CRM application when in fact over the past five years Salesforce has transformed itself into a highly customizable development platform. The built-in workflow design tools combined with what many believe to be the most developed API infrastructure of any platform out there today provide businesses the opportunity to focus on redefining their business processes to make them in the words of Tim Campos "better, more efficient, faster."

One real world example of where we work with Independent Insurance Agencies to drive results is in the area of pipeline management. Too often agencies allow Producers to make it up as they go without requiring them to adhere to certain best practice minimums. By actually wrapping best practice process around their producer pipeline management process the agency will almost certainly increase close rates and visibility and it is that increase in visibility that ultimately drives up-sell and cross-sell as well as customer retention.

Salesforce.com being a platform rather than a commoditized application allows the technology to follow best practice process rather than the other way round. By working with the client, we can customize Salesforce.com to ensure that what the Producer sees in the system mimics the process. This approach increases speed and efficiency while eliminating excuses for nonadoption.

Of course to get this right execution is critical. Salesforce.com's ease of customization belies the complexity that comes with any enterprise platform. This is where choosing the right partner is crucial.

At PSAdvisory, we specialize in helping insurance focused organizations implement SalesForce.com. We find that our knowledge of the industry and its culture enable us to align quickly with the goals of the client without having first to understand the notion of a renewal. This enables us to deliver immediate value.]]>Wed, 07 Oct 2015 18:30:43 GMThttp://www.psadvisory.com/blog/get-your-insurance-agency-up-and-running-on-salesforce-in-less-than-30-daysHave you ever considered deploying Salesforce.com for your insurance agency to help drive your organic growth goals but have been scared off by the idea of having to start from scratch. Well this is something that we hear from customers and prospects all the time. Basically the message was if only there was a way to get up and running on Salesforce.com fast but in a way that delivered on all those 'best practice' objectives we all know we should be doing but aren't.

Here at PSAdvisory.com we have been working on set of 'Salesforce for Insurance' templates that not only enable you to get up and running fast but that deliver functionality out of the box that will make your Producers more productive from a organic growth perspective on day one.

We realize you don't want to reinvent the wheel but rather just make it spin faster.

Want to learn more. Fill out the contact form and let us give you a demo.]]>Mon, 13 Apr 2015 18:05:12 GMThttp://www.psadvisory.com/blog/have-you-activated-the-salesforce1-account-news-feed-yet

Did you know SalesForce1 has a secret? Yes, there is a native News Feed for account records but you have to activate it for your users.When you turn on Account News, the Account News card appears automatically on Account related information pages in all versions of Salesforce1.

It’s also included in Salesforce Today, which is available in the Salesforce1 downloadable apps.Here is how.

Account News is disabled by default. Turn this feature on in the full Salesforce site. From Setup, click Salesforce1 Setup | Account News. Look for the Enable Account News checkbox. Is that not awesome?

Unfortunately, it is not yet available in the browser UI but let's all hope it will be soon.

About the Author

Andrew Bartels is a partner at PS Advisory, a firm dedicated to helping Insurance organizations and other professional services firms deploy and customize Salesforce.com, implement best practices and generate an ROI. Andrew has been CTO for a Top 100 Independent Insurance Agency and is recognized by Salesforce.com as one of the leading innovators of implementing Salesforce.com in the insurance vertical. Learn more at www.psadvisory.com

Salesforce has a marketing catchphrase that says 'Now you can run your business from your phone'. While that might be true there is a catch. The catch is that first you need to run your business from your full-screen browser. Here is why. Until you have accessed an object 'List View' from within the browser that 'List View' will not be visible via the SalesForce1 mobile interface. For example, until you have run the 'All Accounts' view from the browser that 'List View' will not be viewable from the Salesforce1 app Accounts tab.This might actually come as a surprise to long time SalesForce users since if you use SalesForce regularly then 'List Views' are most likely part of your daily workflows. However with the advent of the much improved Salesforce.com mobile experience I am seeing new users download and access the app immediately after logging in for the first time even before they run a single 'List View' from within the browser UI. The users initial SalesForce experience is mobile and not the more traditional PC or Mac browser experience, after all, believe the hype of not we do live in a mobile-first world. So the next time you roll out a new org and get reports that Salesforce 'List Views' are missing you know how to respond. Have the user log into the full-screen browser and run the 'List View' at least once and like magic that 'List View' will appear in the mobile app object tab.

About the Author

Andrew Bartels is a partner at PS Advisory, a firm dedicated to helping Insurance organizations and other professional services firms deploy and customize Salesforce.com, implement best practices and generate an ROI. Andrew has been CTO for a Top 100 Independent Insurance Agency and is recognized by Salesforce.com as one of the leading innovators of implementing Salesforce.com in the insurance vertical. Learn more at www.psadvisory.com